Tag: Ricky Martin

You are doing incredible at life, when you can turn the most mediocre of chores, into something to look forward to.

Taking washing the dishes for example.

I don’t mind washing the dishes all too much. Like, I don’t dream about it or anything, but I certainly don’t go “Ugh! Another fork! Damn you cutlery!” when I have to wash something.

That’s Hubbie. But even he has gotten used to the sometimes mundane duties of life, and has found a way around this…

He connects his phone to YouTube, then turns on theportablespeaker… and BOOM! Instant concert in the kitchen as he is washing the dishes. He is singing, even dancing (YES, dancing), and then baby girl will join in, as the dishes stay dirty in the sink.

He calls it balance.

Tonight, I cottoned on to this. I was doing the dishes, and likewise hooked up the phone online so I could pump out some old 80s tunes. I was in an old-school kinda mood, starting at Wet Wet Wet, then YouTube suggested some Savage Garden, and I was pondering how the duo did so bloody well in so little a time and then virtually disappeared, when another song I’ve been meaning to play to Hubbie sprung into my mind.

Jon Bon. Man he looks fine in the clip. No wonder women were losing their minds (and panties) for him so many decades ago.

The moment in question that I wanted Hubbie to listen to was 2:12 into the clip, when Jovi yells

“And baby you know my hands are dirty”

and then Richie Sambora shadows the same line before Jovi sings

“But I wanted to be your Valentine”…

It’s nothing about the words, and yet ALL about the way the two voices scream in perfect melody alongside each other… I just LOVE IT.

And then of course, the ‘dancing kitchen’ festivities began because baby girl wanted to be picked up, so up she went in my arms, onto the makeshift kitchen dancefloor we stepped, and I started making out like I was Bon Jovi as I screamed

“I’ll be there for you

These five words I swear to you

When you breathe

I want to be the air for you

I’LL BE THERE FOR YOU!”

I swear, this girl of ours is going to grow up with the BEST music taste. She knows all the current radio stuff, and yet she immediately bops along when Prince comes on, sings “No No No” about Amy Winehouse’s rehab, and shakes her hips to Ricky Martin.

(Lleyton fist-pump!)

Hubbie joined our circle once he had finished observing Jon Bon’s hair, and our dancing in the kitchen moment was then complete.

I mean, I know we have just passed what was an eclipse a little while ago, but the planets must still be severely out of alignment or something, because the energy in our house tonight was absolutely, positively

s-c-a-t-t-e-r-e-d.

At one point Hubbie asked me to “give me something.” A.K.A ‘fire me up.’ Since Ricky Martin was currently blasting through the portable speaker, the new song of his clearly wasn’t doing it for Hubbie, so I went back-to-basics-Ricky.

I dare you not to sway/tap your feet/bop along. I turned the volume right up, and then baby girl did something funny – she took her socks off and rolled her pants right up. It was funny because she was copying Hubbie. He is constantly ‘I live at the beach,’ (I know, eye roll) even in Winter, as he is always without socks and with his jeans rolled up.

After I saw her do that… this warmth-loving, comfort-seeking, I-always-have-my-slippers-on-around-the-house glass-half-full gal took the challenge.

Hubbie almost hid under the table when he saw me rip off my socks and start to roll up my jeans.

And then we proceeded to dance around the kitchen, these three highly insane people, with Ricky Martin shaking his booty on the youtube video in the background.

Having your own kid is super cool. Apart from the loving them until the depths of the earth, reaches of the galaxy, and ends of time thing… it is also awesome, just knowing that they are a version of you.

They have your DNA. They may look like you. Their hands may be slender like yours. Their eyes the same brown, face the same heart shape, and laugh the same adorable cackle you yourself used to have at 3.

These things are kind of out of your control, just as much as they are out of control for your child. They can’t choose their looks or their predisposition to certain things.

But what they CAN control is themselves. And when they choose to do and be like you…

It’s pretty damn cool.

It’s all in the little things. As it always is. But she will want to wear a dress, when I wear a dress. She sees owls on my pyjamas – she wants owls on her pyjamas.

I’m brushing my teeth, and suddenly, because I didn’t hound her this time, she is reaching out and grabbing for her toothbrush, and we stand there side by side, looking at ourselves in the mirror as foam spills from our mouths, grinning.

She finds me putting on make up before going out, and she is then asking me for make up too. I give her some glittery not-obvious stuff, and she applies it to her skin with such careful precision, yet at the end I can’t even see anything there. I smile broadly and tell her she was beautiful to begin with, but “good job!”

I sing to Ricky Martin and Prince – she bops and hums along.

I drink coffee – she drinks babycino.

🙂

Today, she did the cutest thing. During our daily coffee break after lunch, we were seated at the table and enjoying our little time together. She’ll have her babycino and some other sweet, usually some chocolate, while some cake or chocolate too will accompany my cappuccino. As we sat there, I brought the coffee mug to my lips, my left hand naturally going to rest on my hip, and the action made me aware of the hilarity of it, because in our high school years bestie would often be sitting at a desk with one hand on it, the other on her hip. It was funny, because she was sitting – there was no need to put a hand, or any hand on her hips. It was such a standing pose, and here, one hand always found its way there.

Baby girl must have realised my action as I did, because as she drank her babycino, her eyes skimmed over my arm on hip, and she immediately dropped one hand from her cup, and placed it on her hip.

Just like me.

It was a little gesture, but it was also the grandest one.

Just like Mum. She wanted to be just like Mum, whether Mum’s action made sense or not.

Of course, I then dropped it, telling baby girl to hold her cup with two hands (never-ending Mum worry of spilt food/drink taking over) but of course, she wasn’t going to listen to me now, was she?

I stared at my mobile in shock. “What?!” I demanded the word, my eyes popping at what was before me.

Hubbie was concerned “what happened?”

I stared at the message bestie had written to me. ‘George Michael passed away.’

It was sadly fitting that the message came from her. George Michael was a favourite and prominent musical figure in our teens. Careless Whisper, Too Funky, Freedom and I Want Your Sex were regular sing-a-longs. I even think I have the handwritten lyrics to Careless Whisper given to me by bestie, stored away somewhere in my old room at my parents’ house.

What a year. First the shocking passing of Prince – and now, George Michael? I had always believed I would see him one more time, at least…

So many memories, so many life anthems. Each of his songs brings a different vision, a different story or place to mind.

But first, the memory my sister tells me. She is a teen, in the 80s. She and her bestie are at the airport. Wham steps out of a car; they turn, and wave up, to a large group of them. Directly at them. A swarm of fans push up against them, squashing them against the front rail they are up against. Later that night, she is in a fan picture on the news behind the newsreader who is reporting on Wham’s appearance in Melbourne.

She was the first George Michael fan in our family. I naturally followed.

Bopping to the beat of Too Funky. It was my internal anthem as I walked, my inner music that I used to repeat to myself to raise my confidence as I went through my early teens.

Then as I got older, that anthem got replaced by Flawless. In the car, volume on full, powering through the streets with George beside me ( 😉 )

Faith. Like seriously, who in this world looks cooler than George in his toe-tapping skin-tight jeans and aviator sunnies. I don’t care his sexual orientation (um, Ricky Martin obsession anyone?) but that man is damn! good looking.

My Twisted Lyrics series over on SmikG is inspired by a misheard Careless Whisper lyric, posted by an online writer who wrote that instead of hearing the correct “Guilty feet have got no rhythm!” they heard “I must admit I have no rhythm!” That error made me LOL so much, and stayed with me for so long that many, many years later, I decided to implement that misheard lyric thread into my parent blog.

My first few months of coffee. Maybe 5 years ago now. On a Saturday morning, making myself a fresh cuppa as I watched George Michael music videos, and literally jumping out of my skin with dance to the song “I’m Your Man.”

I LOVE that song. I can’t explain to you how much the beat lifts me up, quite literally.

Amazing. When I bought the single, I played it on repeat, for an entire weekend non-stop. I could not get enough of the melody, his voice, and the words

“I think it’s amazing, I think you’re amazing.”

2010. His first Melbourne concert in 20 or so years. Bestie is with me. Our teenage dream fulfilled. He calls us Sydney, multiple times. We scream, in both horror, and shocked amusement at him, jumping on the first raised level of Etihad stadium, with 1000s of others, the concrete slab actually rocking against our pressure.

(A photo I took on March 3rd 2010 at Etihad Stadium)

That night he sang many of my favourite songs. We rocked to the classics, he did awesome club-versions of Flawless and Spinning The Wheel, as well as his Wham, I’m Your Man 80s fuelled dance-hit. He also performed a song that I had not as yet fallen in love with…

When I later, only days after the concert, fell deeply in love with A Different Corner, I was shattered. I had heard the most beautiful voice singing the most heartbreaking and beautiful words to the most dreamlike and woeful music, and yet I hadn’t appreciated it fully at the time, because I had not yet fallen in love with everything about the song.

I always thought I would hear him perform that version live again. I was convinced I would, and that I would cry, as that song has made me cry so many times before.

53. Only 53. I’m still in a huge amount of shock. People are talking of 2016 as a shocker of a year, and until this happened today, I was a staunch defender. Yes, every year has its ups and downs, and yes, another of my faves, Prince passed earlier this year… but I was adamant that this year wasn’t a write-off, and that there was good, much good to be taken from the past 12 months…

It’s too early for me to make a call. 4 days until the end of 2016, and I just don’t know what to say. Two musical legends have passed, and life just isn’t the same. The world isn’t the same without them in it. The genius, the amazing talent that inhabited this world, is gone.

George Michael will live on, there is no question about it. In our hearts, in our memories, on our screens, and on our radios…he will not fade away.

Quite simply and frankly, I am rapt to have bought the last copy of the Ricky Martin album A Quien Quiera Escuchar at my local JB…

Because, if I had had to shop around, or even shock horror! order it and wait for delivery, that would have delayed the insane satisfaction I had in blasting it on repeat when I got home earlier today.

My colleague didn’t send me a link for a Ricky Martin clip this morning – no, rather he sent me a clip saying “I know you like latino stuff, and like (love) Ricky Martin, so here’s a song…”

In my head, through my eyes, all I saw was this

Ricky Ricky Ricky

like I was in some self-imposed hypnotic coma. I clinked on the link and it took a while to realise ‘no, Ricky does not make a special appearance in this other dude’s clip.’

It was some other dude, singing a song. He was alright. He was no RICKY.

I, if you haven’t guessed it yet, have LOVED Ricky, since I was, oh about 13. It is a long-standing love affair. I happened to see him before most of Australia did too, since I was overseas at the time and anyone who’s ever been to Europe will know that often songs are released a good few months before arriving here on our shores. I saw this man and went “oh my.” Even at the tender age of 13, I was saying ‘oh my.’

But it wasn’t just the way he shook his hips or the way he sang the song made out to my middle name. Or his devilishly good looks. Or his smile. Or his charming personality. Or the fact that you could feel the warmth of his disposition in his interviews. Or the hair. Or the physique. Or the hips (I said hips didn’t I?)

Ok, so maybe it’s all of these things. I’m being cheeky I know. Seriously though, what started out as teenage lust, has turned into something so much more.

I really do love the guy.

My first concert was his first Australian tour back in 2000. I was 17. Since then I’ve bought his albums, listened to his music, both Spanish and English ones, learnt a fair bit of his native tongue inadvertently along the way, and just last year I had the pleasure of seeing him again on tour, for the second time.

I still love his music. He is very safely in my list of top musicians… you know, the few musos you have that no matter what style of music they go through, you still love their tone, their current experimentation, their voice, and their lyrics. You love what their music does to you. You love how it makes you feel. You love the story it tells you and the way the pictures dance magically in front of you as the strong yet gentle voice caresses its way out of the stereo…

Stop. Ok.

Now, I’m not the only one, as most of Australia fell in love with Ricky when he appeared on our version of The Voice. Even straight men are like “I love Ricky.” Like, seriously. He is just amazing. People who don’t know him think of him as that guy who sings poppy commercial stuff and shakes his bon bon around all day long while dancing in the rain on top of a car. No (although that would be a sight). In fact, Shake Your Bon Bon is one of my least favourite songs – I don’t like it one bit. I feel like it paints a very inaccurate picture of his musical talents and scope. The people who don’t look beyond the commercial stuff don’t realise that there is a world of emotion and meaning and seriously funky and upbeat latin tunes just waiting for you to discover.

In line with his caring nature, he has also been heavily involved in his own foundation against child sex trafficking, a cause that needs no further emphasis to prove its importance. Not only is he a talented man, but he has heart, he has compassion, and above all you can tell that he is a genuinely good soul.

I can’t begin to tell you which of his songs I love most. I love so many.

But what happened this morning has had me singing Adios in my head repeatedly.

Without going through the whole story, I basically came across Ricky Martin performing the song Adios on the American Today show recently. It stayed in my head and then today after my colleague mentioned Ricky in a comment (albeit his link didn’t contain Ricky, but it was all the ammo I needed) and with the knowledge that it was a quieter than normal work day, I looked up more clips of the Adios song in question.

Where has this song been all my life?

Well, actually, where has it been for the last two years? I couldn’t believe it had been released in 2014, and I was just learning about it. Some Ricky fan I was.

And then I remembered – 2014. I was raising a tiny human then, a pre-1 year old. I was forgiven.

So, the video has been viewed in both English and Spanish version by ‘moi’ today, a combined total of at least 30 times, and that is no exaggeration. I am obsessed. I need this song in my life, at full volume pumping up the jam and hassling the neighbours to no end. I need it. And the above mentioned song comes from an album that I also had no idea about (MASSIVE FACE PALM).

So tomorrow you know what I am buying at my local JB HI FI, don’t you?

This current Ricky song obsession, is just further proof that he is a stayer, of musical proportions, and hu-manly proportions, and all other proportions in my life, FOREVER. I haven’t even gone into proper depths, on the impact this man’s music has had on my life, as this post being written pre-midnight just would not do it justice.

I’ll just need to be grateful for every Ricky song ever made for the length of this blog’s existence… my whole life.

And what makes this relationship even better is that Hubbie totally agrees with me that he is pretty cool… he likes his hair.

Flashback 15 years ago. I’m 17, at my first concert. I look up at the stage, squealing like the crazed-genre teenage maniac I am.

“He looked at me!” I grasp my sister’s hand, and she laughs. “Ricky looked at me!”

The Ricky in question, is of course one of my fave singers, Ricky Martin.

I was lucky to have been going to what would eventually be one of my constant never-changing fave singer’s concerts, as my first concert nonetheless. I was lucky that he had looked at me. And I was lucky to be 10 rows from the front, which is how he came to look at me in the first place.

Fast forward to today. I have an addition next to me – baby girl; on the other side of me, the same sister, but she also has an addition, her youngest son. The man in the blue costume makes his way up the side of the theatre towards us. He comes as close as 2 rows behind us, and I look back at him, waving and smiling.

He looks at me, and waves, smiling.

In my head, with much amusement I think ‘Anthony looked at me!’

Minutes later, and I’m waving to a man in a purple costume a few rows in front of us. He looks up and at me directly in the eye, returning the wave.

‘Lachy looked at me!’

I don’t say this out loud, like my 17 year-old self did so many years ago. I know it’s tacky. I know it’s juvenile. Yet still, I get a lot of satisfaction from thinking it, and amusement from seeing how my life has progressed since then.

If you have come this far and you still don’t know who the hell Anthony and Lachy are, you clearly don’t or never have had kids.

If you do have kids, you’ll appreciate that I’m talking about the kids sensation, The Wiggles. If you have had kids, and even if you’re not from Australia, it’s still very likely that you have heard about them, since they have been around for over 20 years, and are known quite well abroad. You will understand then, my sentiment.

And if kids are not yet in your life – yet – well then get to it. Being at a Wiggles concert while your toddler loses her shit dancing and spinning around to the music, well that’s almost worth having kids to experience that.

Baby girl is two months shy of 3. As I revved her up for today, telling her where we were going and with who, she was excited. She’s at an age, where she really knows. Not just ‘knows’ shit. But really knows shit. And she got excited for a reason. The concert was brilliant. My sister and I enjoyed it just as much as our kids. Baby girl threw herself into it, dancing along, and completely exhausted herself by the end of it. It was such a joy to watch and experience, seeing her so happy, made even more so by the fact that it wasn’t one of their huge arena concerts – it was a smaller, very intimate, you-can-see-everything-from-up-the-back (and we should know we were there) type of concert.

I absolutely loved it. So did baby girl. Here she is, at one of her (very short) rest periods.

You have to understand. A parent will go to great lengths to ensure their child is happy. Because when their child is happy and at peace, so are they.

I am grateful for these shows, and these performers, who provide a space for all to be happy.